


A man hath enough of his tears

by Lilliburlero



Category: David Blaize - E. F. Benson
Genre: Ficlet, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Meta, Parody, Piffle, self-parody
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-28
Updated: 2015-03-28
Packaged: 2018-03-20 01:21:50
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 784
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3631332
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lilliburlero/pseuds/Lilliburlero
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>David and Frank talk in the bath.</p><p>*</p><p>Advisory: flippant treatment of internalised homophobia.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A man hath enough of his tears

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Makioka](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Makioka/gifts).



> Written for a self-parody meme: 'give me a fandom and/or pairing and I'll write you a snippet of self-parody fic', to Makioka's prompt for Frank/David.

The large room with its rows of baths was succumbing to the November gloom. Forbearing to switch on the electric light, Frank Maddox stood in the doorway, reproaching himself for his disappointment in finding it empty. His macabre imagination presented the baths as tombs― _Matthew 23:27, when you're in one of them, Maddox_ , he thought bitterly. He stood shivering for half an hour, wearing only a towel, while his author made a futile trawl of the internet and a selection of public school novels of the relevant era to discover if pull-cord light switches in bathrooms were a thing circa 1908 or whenever this sodding novel is set. The search proving inconclusive, his author had him simply 'turn on the light', because actually no reader is likely to give a damn about period light-fittings. He ran a bath while his author fretted quietly about whether 'ran' is the U-verb for filling baths. 

Settling comfortably into the fluent, nurturing element, Frank considered how best to repress his next unwholesome thought. It was much more difficult this half, there being no cricket to occupy his mind. He heard a familiar, piercing whistle in the passage.

David Blaize bounded into the bathroom, freshly mud-splattered from doing something revoltingly chaste and healthy that his author, a pallid, weakly, indoors type, wasn't remotely interested in.

‘Hullo, Frank,’ he said, flinging off his towel and turning the tap on the neighbouring bath. ‘Don’t the pipes in this place make a fearful row?’

Frank groaned as his author contemplated a syntactically intractable multi-clause sentence euphemistically suggesting that the sight of David’s glorious arse had rendered him temporarily incapable of coherent thought. It gave him a pain in the―neck, this having to live in a story written by someone with apparent (and vain) ambitions to be a sort of subfusc Anthony Powell, and who _would_ go around inserting memorable phrases from other novels into one’s internal monologue.

‘Damned lucky to have indoor plumbing at all,’ he said evenly, inwardly dashed because the aggravating buttocks had disappeared from view into the enamel tub. The memory of those same thewy hams, clad only in thin flannels and presented for six cuts with a racquet-handle, swam inconveniently to mind. His voice grew perceptibly gruffer. ‘Blokes a couple of stories down only have a tin hip-bath, and they’re in 1952.’

‘Poor blighters,’ David said, but his mind was clearly occupied by other matters than the primitive ablutionary arrangements inflicted on some people living two world wars in the future because their author wanted to be seen to be making a point about downward class mobility resulting from systemic homophobia while still writing some pretty egregious domestic fluff, and a jolly good thing too. No good could come of thinking of that sort of rot. He scrubbed the tokens of recent athletic endeavours from his person with pink washroom soap, and lay back to wallow. ‘I say, Maddox―I wanted to have a word with you about Marlow.’

‘Marlow―is he the crossover chap from the other novels with the usefully elastic timeline? Fair hair? Never stops jawing about the Navy and the Elizabethan stage? Rather fetching little soul, I think.’ Frank sometimes found their author's propensity to crossover fic a trifle tiresome, but one did meet some jolly attractive and decent fellows that way; 'twasn't much to complain of, all things considered.

‘That’s the one. He’s growing up rather good-looking, and I’m damned if I’ll have him taken up by some brute and spoiled―sweet-natured little beggar, too. I believe it would make me pretty sick if I saw him getting into beastly ways―and―well―’ David looked down and stirred the water into a simulacrum of his mental agitation.

‘What?’

‘Well, I feel I owe it to you―for keeping all that filth away from me―to―Lord, does this sound frightful cheek? I’m talking like a missionary.’

‘Thou hast conquered, O pale Galilean!’ As he spoke, Frank realised the implications of his contractually obligatory Swinburne quotation and continued hurriedly, ‘Not a bit. It’s rather good sport, taking care of a kid like that―or so I found it.’ 

David’s ruddy colour deepened a little further. ‘How ripping. Now we can talk piffle again. I say, Maddox, would you like me to scrub your back? There’s always that queer little spot the sponge doesn’t quite reach when one does it oneself.’

‘Oh, would you? Nothing quite like poignant acts of circumscribed physical affection―preferably performed when both parties are absolutely starkers―to strengthen my resolve to internalise society's prejudice and legally-sanctioned oppression in order to live a life of bleak, howling, sexually-frustrated misery. Thanks awfully, David.’

Frank would hate himself for it later.

**Author's Note:**

> The title is, naturally enough, from Swinburne, 'Hymn to Proserpine.'


End file.
